The sights and sounds of Southwest Airlines jets passing over Dallas on their way to or from Love Field are a regular part of life in the city.

Each day, some 200 aircraft operated by Southwest, as well as Delta, Alaska and a handful of private fliers, make their way from the urban airport to destinations around the country, with a roughly equal number of arrivals.

And while each follows the same general patterns for navigating the North Texas's crowded skies, the exact path they take can vary based on a number of factors.

These variations caught the attention of Dallas resident Glenn Forbes, who regularly spots the planes from his home in Buckner Terrace, as well as during walks in the Great Trinity Forest.

"I'll see them for a period of days or weeks, then they'll go away. It doesn't see to have anything to do with the weather or the season. Are they moving these around just to not bother people?" he asked.

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To get to the bottom of Glenn's question, it's best to start with some air traffic basics. Love Field-bound aircraft share the skies with dozens of planes at any given moment that could be on their way to the much larger DFW International Airport, Fort Worth's industrial-focused Alliance Airport or one of the regional airports in places like McKinney or Addison that dot the metroplex.

Each is under the guidance of Federal Aviation Administration air traffic controllers, who are responsible for keeping aircraft suitably spaced both horizontally and vertically, while working to move them to their final destination in the safest and most efficient way possible.

Aircraft generally enter D-FW's airspace from one of four directions. Imagine a square that sits over the region, with the planes entering from one of the four corners — northwest, northeast, southeast or southwest.

From there, air traffic controllers set aircraft on their own particular flight path.

At Love Field, wind plays a major role in determining which direction planes land or takeoff and which runway is used. Where the plane is arriving from, other weather conditions and nearby air traffic can also affect which path jets in the area take.

The result is that nearly every part of Dallas and the surrounding area is passed over by a plane at some point, but depending on the altitude, people on the ground may or may not notice.

"If I look at all the aircraft over a week, there is no point in the sky that does not get covered by an aircraft at some point," said Ferdinand Mehrlich, environmental operations manager at Love Field.

The effect is more noticeable in some places than others, with downtown a popular route for aircraft to funnel into Love Field, while departing flights often favor an exit over the Trinity River.

Those closest to Love Field are sure to notice the regular activity the most, a situation the airport has been keeping an eye on and working to mitigate since the 1980s.

While the number of flights in and out of Love Field has increased since Wright Amendment restrictions were lifted in 2014, modern aircraft are much quieter than their predecessors.

A Southwest Airlines airplane flies into Dallas Love Field Airport in Dallas on Dec. 27, 2018.

(Vernon Bryant/Staff Photographer)

Still, Love Field has a number of measures in place to try to keep the noise down, especially during sensitive overnight hours.

Those include a designated preferred runway on the airport's west side that's further away from nearby neighborhoods. There are also restrictions on running engines while they're being worked on by mechanics from 12 a.m. to 6 a.m., a prohibition on training flights from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. and a request that planes usequieter "rolling takeoffs" when practical.

The airport's program is largely voluntary, and staff members do investigate complaints lodged by residents about the noise. In 2018, the city received 211 complaints from 63 people, a number that's been falling for several years after reaching as high as 2,500 complaints in 2015, the year after flight restrictions were lifted.

Airport officials are not able to impose a mandatory curfew or issue fines, Instead, they work with aircraft operators to minimize the impact as much as possible.

For Forbes, his home is far enough from Love Field that noise isn't a problem, he said.

"I'm not bothered by it at all. Where I'm seeing them, they're not disruptive," he said. "I've always grown up looking at airplanes. When there's one coming by relatively close, I've got to look at it."

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